Now Reading: Kerala’s Kumbanad villages empty as migrant families settle overseas
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Kerala’s Kumbanad villages empty as migrant families settle overseas
Kumbanad and nearby villages in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district are losing residents as successive generations of migrant families choose to build lives abroad. The Hindu reports that Koipuram Government Higher Secondary School’s enrolment…
The Story in Brief
Kumbanad and nearby villages in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district are losing residents as successive generations of migrant families choose to build lives abroad. The Hindu reports that Koipuram Government Higher Secondary School’s enrolment has fallen from nearly 2,500 students two decades ago to around 80, while an anganwadi in Ward 12 has 11 children.
Large houses built with overseas earnings now stand vacant or are being sold. Older residents describe ageing neighbourhoods, closed shops and shrinking populations. Pathanamthitta’s migration moved from other parts of India to the Gulf and later to the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. The remittance-fuelled prosperity that transformed the region has not prevented its villages from emptying.
The Indian Opinion
The lazy story is that migration brought only prosperity, or that empty houses simply reflect Kerala’s success. Both miss the cost. Overseas earnings built schools, hospitals and homes, but children leaving has weakened the institutions that hold villages together. Nor should one school’s fall prove every village is disappearing. The useful test is whether enrolment, household counts and local services keep declining over the next census cycle.
Source: thehindu.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
